FREE PRINTABLE: A Kids Guide To Repentance
I’m excited to share the progress on our “calming closet hideaway!”
We’ve been blessed with a huge under the stairs closet. I love having this space for them to go when they just need to decompress, read or calm down! The calming corner kit helps them to first identify their emotion (we’ve spent a lot of time talking about what each emotion is, I was surprised they didn’t know all of them) and then they choose a calming strategy to help them deal with their big emotions as tiny people.
We also have a calming basket we’re still building with things like play dough, building material, relaxing picture puzzles, pictures of our family, sensory stuff and stuffed animals. The goal is not to segregate them from others, but to give them space to identify and deal with their feelings, instead of react negatively towards themself or others. Hopefully this will build a solid foundational of emotional awareness as they grow up.
Towards the back of the closet we have a table and chairs to color, as well as a reading nook with a light and wall mounted book rack from ikea. As a new homeschool family, I love that they’ll have this separate space to get away to read, craft or relax in a calming space, complete with twinkle lights!
I also created, and I’m giving away, a free printable, a kids guide to repentance, “What do I do when I sin? Repent and bring it to Jesus!” Sometimes kids need to go into this space to calm down but other times they need to take some time in here because they’ve made a bad choice.
This printable is a gospel-centered guide to help kids begin to deal with their struggle with sin by getting to the root of it and giving them the remedy in Christ alone! It’s tempting to gravitate towards a behavior modification approach as parents, whether religious or not, that focuses on external obedience with little regard for the heart.
This approach is more intentional about teaching our kids to bring their sin to the cross, again and again, and ask Jesus to help them love God and others instead of expecting them to muster up the strength on their own. It’s the same good news we need as parents- Jesus paid the price for our sin, we get his perfect performance stamped over our lives, even though we don’t deserve it, and so this motivates a life of worship, not guilt and punishment. (But it’s hard as a mom to parent tiny sinners!) I hope running to Jesus with our messes becomes a foundational principal that shapes the rest of their lives, because it’s what we need too!
Part of the guide also includes rooting our kids in God’s unconditional love for them even when they make bad choices, and encourages them to obey out of gratitude for the grace we receive from Christ, instead of insecure compliance to rules that is always striving for love and acceptance.
Here’s the link to the downloadable calming kit shown above which we laminated, and have also added prayer, listen to a worship song or diffuse essence oils to help cope with big feelings as a tiny human! The kit was $5: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Feelings-Check-In-Self-Regulation-Calm-Corner-Lap-Book-w-Mindfulness-Tools-4348911
And here’s the link to the free printable for the repentance guide. Hope it helps your kiddos be pointed back to Jesus and learn how to grapple with the sin we all deal with daily. Let’s give them JESUS!